ICYMI: The European Right to Repair campaign

We launched the European Right to Repair campaign during Fixfest! It’s a multi-year coalition campaign to push for longer-lasting products through the Right to Repair

Main asks of the campaign in the short/medium term

• Ecodesign regulations for more products, starting with smartphones
• National registers for repairers in all EU countries, to ensure that as many independent repairers as possible can access spare parts and repair manuals (in their absence, registers will be controlled by manufacturers)
• A EU repairability index, to make repairability scoring of products is visible to all consumers at the point of purchase

Get involved!

In Germany, Italy and the UK, activists are inviting signers of last year’s petitions for strong repair provisions in the EU Ecodesign measures to sign up for updates.

Any individual is encouraged to sign up for updates.

The campaign is asking local groups to “join” through their national networks, and is working on national membership now. The campaign is not restricted to full EU member states, so countries like Norway - and potentially soon the UK, are still very much encouraged to join.

Please direct questions to @Chloe or by clicking the link on the front page.

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I have been reading IEC 60706 (BS EN 60706) - a standard for maintainability, written in 2006. It would be a very simple matter for all public procurement contracts to contain a requirement to comply with this standard. This could have a big impact on the way things are designed, since it requires a maintenance plan to be created at design time. The standard is entirely technology-independent, and just as valid today as when it was written - but I think it has been largely forgotten.

Unfortunately, the standard costs money, but if you only get one part, go for BS EN 60706-2:2006 - “Maintainability of equipment. Maintainability requirements and studies during the design and development phase”, which spells out the obligations of the designer to give maintenance proper consideration.